ngCERT Raises Alarm Over Escalating DDoS Attacks on Nigeria's Critical Infrastructure

The Nigeria Computer Emergency Response Team has issued a fresh alert to organisations across Nigeria’s critical sectors, warning of a sustained and intensifying wave of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks disrupting digital infrastructure. In the advisory, ngCERT said threat actors are increasingly deploying sophisticated techniques, including botnets, amplification methods, and the exploitation of known vulnerabilities, to overwhelm systems and render essential services inaccessible. The agency noted that both government and private sector platforms are at risk as attackers refine their methods. MoreStories African airlines record 19.2% surge in international travel demand in March – IATA FG approves Nigeria Aircraft Leasing Company to expand airline fleet access DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt a server, service, or network by overwhelming it with a flood of Internet traffic, making it unavailable to legitimate users. What the ngCERT is saying According to the agency, the evolving nature of DDoS attacks has made them more complex and harder to mitigate. • These attacks are now often multi-vector, combining different techniques such as volumetric floods that saturate bandwidth, protocol-based exploits targeting network layers, and application-layer attacks designed to mimic legitimate user activity. • ngCERT explained that attackers frequently exploit vulnerabilities such as CVE-2018-10561, CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2019-19781, CVE-2018-7600, and CVE-2020-25705 to compromise systems and expand botnet networks. • These compromised systems, which may include servers, endpoints, and Internet of Things devices, are then used to launch coordinated attacks. The advisory also highlighted the use of reflection and amplification techniques leveraging services like DNS, NTP, and Memcached, significantly increasing the volume and impact of malicious traffic directed at target systems. More insights The agency warned that successful attacks could have far-reaching consequences for Nigeria’s economy and national security. These include prolonged service outages, financial losses arising from operational disruptions and mitigation efforts, and weakened resilience of critical infrastructure. Beyond immediate operational impacts, ngCERT noted that such attacks could damage corporate reputations and erode public trust in digital systems. In some cases, DDoS incidents may also serve as a diversionary tactic, masking more severe cyber threats such as ransomware deployment or data exfiltration. Organisations may also face regulatory and compliance risks if they fail to implement adequate cybersecurity measures in line with national standards. To address the growing threat, ngCERT urged organisations to strengthen their cybersecurity posture and align their response strategies with national incident response frameworks. • Recommended actions include activating internal incident response protocols, collaborating with Internet Service Providers for traffic filtering, and deploying dedicated DDoS protection mechanisms such as traffic scrubbing, rate limiting, and filtering systems. • The agency also advised organisations to block malicious IP addresses, restrict non-essential network traffic, and promptly patch known vulnerabilities, particularly CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2019-19781, and CVE-2018-7600. • Further measures include system hardening, disabling unused services, deploying Web Application Firewalls and Intrusion Prevention Systems, and implementing anti-spoofing measures in line with Internet Engineering Task Force Best Current Practices 38. • ngCERT added that organisations should ensure infrastructure resilience through redundancy, load balancing, and auto-scaling capabilities, while maintaining continuous network monitoring to detect anomalies early. What you should know The ngCERT warning comes weeks after the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) raised concerns over coordinated cyber threats targeting Nigeria’s financial systems and key digital infrastructure. NDPC said its technical assessment revealed that “shadowy threat actors” have launched coordinated operations aimed at critical systems in the country. The Commission had urged organisations handling personal data to urgently improve both technical and organisational safeguards to protect Nigerians and other data subjects from privacy breaches and cyber risks.